THERE is no doubt that Ash Sarkar is one of the UK's foremost left-wing commentators.
I don't think I'll ever get the image of her shouting "I'm a communist, you idiot" at Piers Morgan out of my head. It was the unforgettable viral moment that really put Sarkar on the map, and in her own words, "changed my life irreversibly".
I laughed out loud reading Sarkar describe the moment which summarised the extent of that transformation. In Minority Rule, her debut book, she reveals that she once bumped into an ex-boyfriend years ago, only to find he was wearing a T-shirt quoting those very words. It's not the most traditional measure of success, but it definitely shows you've made it.
@novaramedia I’m literally a communist! It’s been five years since Ash Sarkar embarrassed Piers Morgan when he kept wrongly saying that Barack Obama was Ash’s “hero”. The exchange took place on ITV’s Good Morning Britain. #politics #ukpolitics #uk #media #trump ♬ original sound - Novara Media
I remember clearly how much Sarkar's viral clip stunned me seven years ago. I was just starting at The National the week it aired. It was genuinely refreshing to see a left-wing figure rise above the bullying tactics of a right-wing pundit. I've followed Sarkar's career closely ever since, and listened out for her advice about making your mark as a progressive in an otherwise conservative media landscape.
Given Sarkar's prolific media appearances, it's hard to believe she hasn't put out a book before now. But here it is. Minority Rule is about many things – wealth inequality, the failure of identity politics, culture wars, austerity, the unfairness of a private landlord-centred housing system – but there is one overarching theme. It does a pretty fantastic job of summing up what an absolute state the UK is in.
Sarkar is hardly a committed Scottish independence activist, and over the years she and her colleagues at Novara Media have prompted criticism from Scottish and Welsh leftists for what's often seen as "London-centric" coverage. But if you're seeking the materials to make the case for leaving the Union in 2025, it would be hard to find something more prescient than Minority Rule. I don't think any commentator has captured the experience, particularly for young people, with this kind of depth – all the while keeping the text remarkably accessible.
What connects Sarkar and I is our shared experience trying to do something different within the UK media landscape. Minority Rule's analysis of Britain's media – how it makes enemies out of vulnerable groups, makes mountains out of molehills and keeps the interests of the wealthiest at the fore – stood out to me. Her description of commentators' obsessions with "trivial shit", particularly.
"What you've got to do is try and hijack the stupid discussion to make it go somewhere useful." It's 9am, and Sarkar and I are on Zoom trying to figure out how to take on the right-wing media establishment. "Not always possible, certainly not easy."
Sarkar has a term for the media's ability to seize on something small, and make it into something huge and dominating. This is a "micro-event". Here's an example. Just days before Sarkar and I meet, I'd been helping our team fact-check whether the SNP was really going to "ban cats". It started with a throw-away line in a report, and resulted in the First Minister facing questions about it in a media huddle. Right-wing news sites were running endless stories on this impending, terrible war on felines. But it obviously was never going to happen. Micro-event.
"What you end up with at the end of the chain is so different from the original event that's being covered," she says. "And it means that overall, you end up with a really distorted, warped and inaccurate picture of the world around you.
"You are kind of in this maelstrom of inaccurate, unrepresentative coverage and then you're trying to say no, that's not true, and you're already on the back foot."
So how do you go out into the media and turn it on its head effectively, without constantly feeling like you're fighting fires that can't be put out?
Readers who didn't first encounter Sarkar during the Piers Morgan incident may well recognise her from her many Question Time or Politics Live appearances. Many progressives see these flagship BBC shows as a trap. But Sarkar succeeds in their quirks, making them work for her. A recent clip of her criticising fellow panellists for not calling Donald Trump's Gaza commentary out for what it was, which is obviously ethnic cleansing, gained millions of views online.
I ask Sarkar how she does it.
"Question Time is an interesting one because you're dancing this dance of the questions being chosen for you and they're about issues that you don't pick," she explains.
"It's a reflection often of what the politics desks across the country think is important rather than what you might think is important or what the public thinks is important.
"So you're having to play that game of trying to direct the conversation to the place where you think it needs to go, while at the same time answering the question because there's nothing the audience hates more than evasiveness."
What Sarkar thinks could improve set-ups like Question Time is a reduction in focus of what's been in the headlines that week, and more space for the public to determine what matters to them.
"What we've seen time and again is that the gap between what's being represented and what's being felt by people has resulted in huge political instability," she points out.
"Investigating what's actually going on for people, and that being a line of questioning that journalists and politicians have to respond to ... I think that would better serve audiences."
Part of the problem with shows like these is that there are so few left-wing figures with platforms like Sarkar's, or Owen Jones's, or George Monbiot's. For every one of them, it feels like there are 10 shadowy right-wing think tank researchers or GB News presenters waiting in the wings to blame all the UK's ills on immigration.
Why? Social media gives people of all political persuasions the chance to have their say and make a name for themselves. How can it be that commentary-led broadcasting is still dominated by the right and the centre?
"I think that there are lots of structural reasons for that," Sarkar suggests.
"One is that if you are known to be on the left, it is much harder for you to have a career path that takes you through legacy outlets. That's something which I write about in the book."
The author points to the case of Alex Wickham. He's what she calls a "high-status" Westminster lobby journalist. But he started out at Breitbart – a website so far right it had a section called "Black Crime".
"That path from far right into the mainstream cannot be replicated by someone from the left, unless they do a very public repudiation of everything they once believed before," Sarkar continues.
Look at the BBC's Rianna Croxford, Sarkar says. This journalist's social media was combed through for evidence that she was a secret leftie, supporting Jeremy Corbyn or being critical of the Tories. Conservative papers used her old posts as an example of why Croxford shouldn't be employed by the public broadcaster.
"The same does not apply for right-wing journalists who expressed opinions before they entered the industry," Sarkar says.
The London-centric left?
Among those who do actually succeed at making a career from progressive political commentary, there is one thing that seems to connect them all. London.
There are exceptions, of course, but the criticism often levelled at the likes of Sarkar or Jones from those in Scotland, Wales or even just the north of England is that the commentary is London-centric. That it doesn't consider the distinct needs of devolved nations, or their political differences. Novara Media, the online left-wing media outlet at which Sarkar serves as a contributing editor, has often seen this argument used against it. I ask Sarkar if she understands or agrees with that.
"I think that's absolutely fair cop, to be honest," she replies frankly.
"This is something which we actually discuss a lot," she goes on. "As you well know, organic newsgathering is expensive, right? And that is always the biggest barrier to being able to tell stories which are outside of your geographical world or wider professional network.
"Increasingly, we're bringing people in who are not from London."
For instance, Sarkar points out, Adam Ramsay, the Scotland-based journalist, is now a regular contributor. "But there's certainly a London and England centricity to our coverage."
The writer says the team could help to combat this by putting more cash behind their reporting work, and using it to support an array of journalists from around the UK. "That's just going to take us some time and some more money," Sarkar adds.
So where is Sarkar on the Union these days? There has long been a bit of tension between the vocal lefties down in England and the wider Scottish independence movement – maybe a feeling of opposing aims, or the idea that each group's goals don't complement the other's. When I first brought on Jones as a contributor, for example, I received a lot of messages from committed activists who were concerned that the journalist would talk down on Scotland, or wouldn't understand the priorities of the independence movement. The opposite has been true, with our subscribers consistently finding Jones writing passionately about the topics they care about most.
"Let me put it this way," Sarkar considers. "If I was Scottish, I would be pro-independence. But because I live in England, and Scotland provides a well of more progressively inclined voters, I'm saying baby please don't go ... (completely selfishly)."
She goes on: "I can't talk about what it's like to have a Scottish national identity, which feels different from a British one. But in terms of what Scotland has to contend with, so one, being lashed to a polity which is dominated by much more right-wing voters, i.e England, having to deal with the consequences of deindustrialisation, but also particularly in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the problems of gentrification ... runaway house prices, runaway rent prices.
"That's not something London has to deal with. You know, I can really understand why independence would be the answer for Scottish people. I think it's probably in the interests of Scottish people. It's just not in my interest – someone who lives in England and needs all your progressive votes."
This, I think, is probably not a sentence that will help resolve any remaining tensions between Scottish nationalists and the leftist commentators of London.
Verdict on Keir Starmer
I can remember listening to Novara's live podcast years ago, when Sarkar and her co-hosts were discussing allegations that the Keir Starmer-led Labour Party had stitched up selection contests in order to benefit his allies. I can remember thinking it weird that I hadn't heard about this anywhere else.
I'm now having this conversation with Sarkar against the backdrop of a Labour Government which rolls out policies practically indistinguishable from the Tories and Reform. The media covers Starmer's disastrous polling figures these days, but where was the scrutiny of the now-PM back before July 2024?
I ask Sarkar to describe Starmer's time as Prime Minister in one sentence. She doesn't need all that. "Dogshit," she replies, laughing – and taking me by surprise.
"The sad part is that it was predictable," Sarkar says, taking aim at the "bullshit artists" of the UK media and their tendency to "inflate the status of other bullshit artists".
Look at Theresa May, she says – the UK media insisted she would unify the Tories, or smash Labour at the election. "Didn't happen," Sarkar reflects.
"When the hype met the ballot box, then suddenly the opinions change. Same thing happened with Boris Johnson. Everyone in the Westminster lobby pretending that they don't know that he's venal, dishonest and entirely self-serving.
"Then when partygate rolls around and they're collapsing in the polls, journalists suddenly notice what was common knowledge for years."
The same thing has happened with Starmer, she theorises.
"When he was the vehicle for the Labour right taking back power within the party, the entirety of political journalism in Westminster collaborated in the deception.
"They knew he wasn't going to be a left-wing candidate. They knew he wasn't going to stick by his promises, but because they believed in putting the left back in the tomb, they participated in the deception."
Minority Rule offers a pretty bleak picture of where we are. Sarkar herself has said she's not here to offer solutions or make predictions, but I ask where she sees us all 10 years from now anyway.
"It's not good," Sarkar tells me. "It's not just about the UK, it's also about the impact of the climate catastrophe.
"We're entering into a period of increased food insecurity, increased scarcity, competition for resources, ecological degradation, and that has implications for absolutely every aspect of the economy and politics."
The author reflects on Trump's infamous "drill baby drill" comments, Labour's plan to build a third runway or apparently approve oil field development at Rosebank.
"It just seems to me that the political consensus around net zero is breaking down. So I don't think that 10 years' time is going to look good."
Most people reading this would struggle to argue with that assessment. What they would like to see, however, is an independent Scotland working to meet those challenges head-on.
How can we get there? How can progressive movements anywhere work towards a positive outcome?
"I think that if what you want to do is make yourself as effective a political agent as possible, building up those political forces which can oppose and fight back and claim back ground, it means letting go."
We've got to ditch the "atomising", the "anti-solidaristic impulses of neoliberal identity politics".
"That's the thing that we have to do in order to make ourselves effective political fighters again," Sarkar concludes.
Minority Rule: Adventures in the Culture War is published by Bloomsbury, and available in stores from February 27.
